Page 38 of Elven Prince

It felt safe to assume that was a relatively new experience for Maxwell Hannigan. Rebecca hoped he wouldn’t run off after their little showdown and do something stupid in an attempt to blow off more steam.

Part of her wanted to go after him. The other part of her fought against the stabbing pain coursing through her body at the physical departure.

Letting him take off on his own was for the best. He’d been out of line, and he knew it.

When she slowly turned toward the rest of the office, she’d forgotten about both the Security team still at their workstations and the enormous orb of crackling blood-red light sizzling in her palm, spitting sparks and throwing crimson light across every surface. Rebecca snuffed out the battle magic in her hand, ignoring the disappointment of not having had justifiable cause to use it.

And grateful for it at the same time.

Then she turned toward Whit and nodded. “Pull up footage from outside the garage and around the compound perimeter.”

Whit jumped in his seat and spun back toward the computer before pouncing onto his keyboard again. “Right. Yeah, of course. I’m almost there.”

“Start at twenty-four hours before Archie left and check all the way through to right now. If you see anything that doesn’t look quite right, if you seeanythingout of the ordinary, a feather from a bird that doesn’t belong here, I wanna know about it.”

“You got it boss,” Whit replied, though his gaze was already glued to the monitor again as he clicked through files and searched for time stamps.

Rick scooted back toward his workstation. “On it.”

For the sake of whatever integrity he still possessed, Rebecca ignored Adam crawling out from under his desk to start his part of the assignment.

Instead, she walked toward the other currently empty workstation, most likely Maxwell’s, and sat to join them in scanning surveillance footage from the last twenty-eight hours. That seemed the best place to start.

The security team would go over all the data and review the facts over and over again, as many times as necessary, for however long it took to get to the bottom of this seemingly unsolvable mystery attack. Whoever it was, however they’d pulled it off, Rebecca and her task force had to figure it out, no exceptions.

There were no other options.

Preferably, they found the truth before Maxwell lost his shit entirely, his anger issues exploded, and he did something he and Rebecca would both regret.

And, admittedly, before she came to fully regret all the secrets and personal details and confessions she hadn’t entrusted to the shifter before now.

Because at this point, she still couldn’t decide if she was even capable of trusting him completely with anything.

“This isn’t an interrogation. I promise.”

Diego’s crimson eyes flashed once, then he tugged his baseball cap farther down over his forehead before folding his arms. “Sure feels like it.”

“We’ve been in here with everyone else the whole time,” Rebecca told him, “and you’ve watched me talk to everyone else so far. I’m not treating you any differently, but we all need to work together in this if we’re gonna figure out what the hell happened today.”

The Cruorcian sniffed, readjusted his folded arms, then shifted his weight to one side before barely jerking his chin up at her. “Fine. Ask your questions.”

“Same as I’ve been asking everyone else. Did you see, hear, feel, noticeanythingstrange around the compound over the last twenty-four hours?”

“Well you can put this psychological manipulation with all these questions right up there at the top of the list,” he grumbled.

Rebecca sighed and said nothing until Diego finally relented and looked up to meet her gaze again. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. This fucking sucks, but fine. No, I didn’t see anythingweird. If I had, I would’ve said something to someone. I wasn’t eveninthe garage this morning. Been on weapon maintenance all day.”

“Thanks, Diego. If you think of anything else, come find me or any of the Security team, got it?” With a nod, she turned to scan the crowded common room for the few faces of those among her task force she hadn’t yet questioned individually.

“Wait, hold on.” Diego spread his arms. “That’s it?”

She shot him a pert smile. “Did you want there to bemorequestions?”

With a shrug, the Cruorcian rolled his eyes and stalked away toward the refreshments table Bor had restocked last-minute to accommodate every Shade member returningagainafter Nyx’s party.

Then Rebecca continued her rounds, pulling aside the dwindling list of people she hadn’t spoken to yet. She made a point to talk to Shade’s five newest members as well, including Adam, just to cover her bases. But he didn’t know anything more now than during her standoff with Maxwell in the Security office. Nor did he look any less intimidated by his short one-on-one with Rebecca.

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